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Badland

Enamored with that Southern Comfort commercial where the man who has 'gotta be me' struts his stuff along the beach in a bathing suit and leather shoes, a a group of students from the University of Sheffield suddenly had the bright idea to do their own version when Pete sort of volunteered to recreate it, as long as some money got raised for the local children's hospital (and he got a bottle of Southern Comfort).

Amnesty.nl are currently protesting the imprisonment of Nasrin Sotoudeh in Iran and Ales Bialiatski in Belarus. Their street guerilla action is to hang images of them, with hands, on all the bars they can find in Amsterdam. That is on gates around peoples houses, parks and train stations. Private property, city property, definitely not Amnesty or a media property. Yes, ad creep is a peeve of mine if it means the city has to clean it up. Inexpensive ingenuity when it comes to media is how Amnesty gets attention since their media budget isn't large.

PETA are at it again, with their usual woman-hate. No surprises there, but once again they have recycled their own idea. You know how one visual execution with three different models pains me, as that's not really a campaign. There's one thing I think is worse, and it's doing the same idea, over and over again, expecting a different result. Even Einstein knows that's insane.

Lena Dunham, the creator of HBO series Girls makes one big innuendo of a political ad to get out the vote for Obama because apparently he deflowered her or something.

In it, Dunham rambles like she's taken too much Adderall. It has a very creepy Generation Instagram feel to it and the music reminds me somehow of those Mac vs. PC ads. Just when we get to the point where the constant run on sentences and bad jump cut edits are making me want to scream, Dunham finally slows down and says:

The visual art blog AntiVJ has a post called "inspiration vs theft" detailing the case of copy-cat style between the Piranha bar Olympic idents from Publicis Dublin, and the series of studies on human motion done by visuals artists Memo Akten and Quayola. TooLong;Didn'tWatch cliff-notes for the lazy-eyed, these clips look pretty much exactly the same.

Skiver Advertising is pimping out their "vivacious, handsome, smart, ripped" and "a kind-hearted soul" of an account executive at the site WannadateDerek. It's all a twist to pull you in via Billboards, youtube videos and the twitter handle @WannaDateDerek to Skiver advertising, and learn how they can brand stuff for you. Any stuff. Even dateless Derek.

"Everyone is looking for something," says Jeremy Skiver, CEO of Skiver Advertising. "And that's where we come in. We're experts at bringing brands and their audience, and helping them build a strong, lasting and evolving relationship."

Because I am in a smartarse mood today, I'd just like to point out that Uncle Sam's "wants you" recruitment poster is totally a badlander as "Lord Kitchener Wants You" was the UK's call to personal action already back in 1914.

The "pointing at the viewer" guilt trip of the Lord Kitchener poster can be seen echoed in many more posters that came after it. Examples; Smokey the bear, Soviet Union poster by Dmitry Moor, 1941. A United States, World War I poster in Yiddish: "Your Old New Land must have you! Join the Jewish regiment". A British World War I recruiting poster with John Bull asking "Who's Absent? Is it YOU?" in 1915. A Reichswehr recruitment poster by Julius Ussy Engelhard, 1919. "You too must join Reichswehr". And so on. You, dear punter, are wanted as canon-fodder,

The Coffee company nudged customers to try a muffin, or "buy another coffee already" with their execution (top image) in 2008, while GermanWings led people via their free wifi (named after offers) to pages with those offers (also in 2008).

Do you remember the Domestic Violence PSA - Coalition Against Battered Women: "It rarely stops" from Y&R in 2010? Yeah it was a bit like that Macy Grey video from the 90s, where the bruises appeared and vanished from her face, but here our abused heroine wasn't singing about the past. She was busy covering each mark, cut and brusies with makeup, while new ones kept appearing, which made the point of the ad : "It rarely stops".

There's a new ad out, where the Delite-o-magic vending machine challenges people to press the button 100 times, bow down and kneel before it, jump on one leg and dance like a maniac, just to get a free pack of Delites. Forget that "How far will people go for the taste of Fantastic Delites?" sounds a lot like "What would you do for a Klondyke bar" for a second, and forget that it would take five hours to push the button five-thousand times, lets look at the vending machine part of this idea shall we?

Back in 1999, there was - according to all rumors - quite the dramatic pitch for the überhot account of Adidas. W+K Amsterdam was involved, and from the ashes of that pitch was born a brand new agency: 180. Would they show off good once they showed some work? Yes, they would. This Adidas ad blew most people away back then, and was ripped off a few times (some Dutch bank copy was in an early Badlander here). I personally applauded it for being my go-to whenever I needed to show a client that YES you do not to speak the VO when it's written on the screen already, gosh darnit.